Masters at Fifty-Five

Jonas Heaukulani

College Writing

Mrs. Mathews

9/28/2015

Masters at Fifty-Five

        You’ve just been in a horrible accident damaging your spine and leaving you paralyzed from the waist down. Physical therapy may help you regain some control in your extremities but being able to walk unassisted is not in your future. Where do you go from here you may ask. How would you be able to comfortably live at home without a nurse or family member there to help you do some of the most simple of tasks? This is where orthopedic therapy comes in. More specifically my grandmother, Cheryl Cantillon, who for the last 15 years of her life has been a leader in the orthopedic therapy profession. At the age of 55 my grandma returned to school at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut to receive a Master’s degree in orthopedic therapy. This was such an achievement in my eyes because I waited two years out of high school before deciding to finally go to college and found it rather hard to get back into the groove of things. Knowing my grandma did exactly that at the age of 55 inspired me to actually get myself enrolled.

        My grandmother has been in many professions over her life span ranging all the way from bartending in the 60s to being a realtor in the 90s but her latest and perhaps most prestigious profession is her role as an orthopedic therapist. She was at the age of fifty-five in the late 90s when she finally decided to continue her education at Quinnipiac University. When asked what motivated her to return to school she stated, “To be honest I was bored with my profession at the time, realty, and was in search for a change. I first wanted to go to nursing school which is how I ended up in Quinnipiac because of the excellent nursing program but later changed my mind and decided to pursue orthopedic therapy.”  A bold decision for sure because of all the extra necessary schooling needed to be completed to become a licensed therapist. But this didn’t faze her as she said, “I had nothing but time.” While that is a necessary requirement for fulltime schooling another perhaps equally important requirement is finances. Going to a private university for a Master’s degree is no cheap endeavor and without the proper funding, dropping out is scary reality. In our conversation I asked how she was able to pay for school and she said, “I was actually rather lucky in that aspect as I only had to pay for a portion of my first year at Quinnipiac. After my first year I met a group of doctors who were starting a new company for travelling physical and orthopedic therapists and wanted me on their team so they paid for the rest of time at school. They were actually a large reason to why I chose orthopedic therapy as my profession.” I was fascinated with the fact that an employer paid for her to go to university to acquire a Master’s degree, something that is a rarity in this day and age. Supposedly this wasn’t a completely foreign thing for companies to do then because the state of the economy was in such good shape there was a plethora of jobs. So many in fact that companies were having a hard time finding people for high paying positions. In this case they paid handsomely in order to train a person, whom they saw potential, in the field that they need them.

        Her first day back to school in over thirty years without a single inclination to what she should expect. She arrives at campus and parks in the commuter lot closest to her first class, a sort of chemistry class. Excitement is building as she gets ready to start her journey to further education but anxiety is creeping up her spine as well. With fear of being judged for her age or inability to keep up with the present curriculum floating around in her head she doesn’t think she will be able to make it. She finally arrives at her first class with time to spare. The class begins to fill with students no older than twenty but no stares were directed her way. It appeared they didn’t think anything of her, perhaps they thought she was the professor waiting for class to begin. But as time went on she realized that no one cared in college, she was just another person amongst thousands of other people who are working towards bettering themselves and acquiring further education.

As one can imagine going back to school after thirty years is a tough transition but even more so, it is frightening. Getting back into the groove of note-taking, studying, and overall absorbing of the curriculum was what brought upon the most anxiety. My grandma stated that, “I haven’t always been good at school, I think I’ve always had the potential but back in high school it wasn’t as apparent as it is now. But after a month or so into my first year back the anxiety had melted away and confidence in my learning took its place. I looked forward to most classes because I knew this was what I wanted to do and I knew I was good at it.” This was a strong statement and provided a clear picture of who my grandma was while in school. She was a no nonsense student there to learn what she needed and get started in her new career. As for her peers, she says they mostly left her alone. Nobody really tried striking conversation with her or tried to be all that friendly but there wasn’t any discrimination either. She would go to class, do the work, and go home. Campus life was all but non-existent for her which was what I would expect because of her age. She states though that she probably could have taken more initiative herself and perhaps had made friends or participated on campus but didn’t want to be distracted from her work. She added that she had everyone she needed in her life anyways as she glances at a family photo of our entire family her being the eldest.

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